Inclusive Collection: S

"A vibrant story collection about Cambodian-American life-immersive and comic, yet unsparing-that offers profound insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities."

"A neurologist investigates the world of the deaf, examining their past and present treatment at the hands of society, and assesses the value and significance of sign language."

Fiction. "Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship -- the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be."

Fiction. "After years of study in Europe, the young narrator returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood--the enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed. Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land."

Fiction. "When the sister who delighted their parents by her faithful embrace of Mexican culture dies in a tragic accident, Julia, who longs to go to college and move into a home of her own, discovers from mutual friends that her sister may not have been as perfect as believed."

"[The author's] story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her warring parents and seven siblings led a life of uproar, but one full of love and tenderness as well. Growing up, Esmeralda learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of the tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But just when Esmeralda seemed to have learned everything, she was taken to New York City, where the rules - and the language - were bewilderingly different. How Esmeralda overcame adversity, won acceptance to New York City's High School of Performing Arts, and then went on to Harvard, where she graduated with highest honors, is a record of a tremendous journey by a truly remarkable woman."

Nonfiction. "At the heart of the story is Esmeralda's relationship with "the Turk," a passion that gradually becomes a prison out of which she must emerge to become herself. The expansive humanity, earthy humor, and psychological courage that made Esmeralda's first two books so successful are on full display again in The Turkish Lover."

Fiction. "A dazzling literary debut novel-within-a-novel, in the vein of The Prophets, about a young author writing about the forbidden love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl--in which Mohammed's story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction."

"In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran: of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life and of the enormous toll repressive regimes exact on the individual spirit. Marjane's child's-eye-view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family."

"The great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists continues her description of growing up in Tehran--a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contradictions between public and private life."

"The text demonstrates the way in which Malcolm X's philosophy lies at the intersection of the thought of W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon and is an integral part of the revolutionary politics formed to alleviate the plight of people of African descent globally. Exploring themes of ontology, the body, geographic space and revolution, Black Minded provides a much-needed appraisal of Malcolm X's political philosophy."

"This now-classic collection [shares] articles, personal stories, and poems by fat women about their lives and the fat-hating society in which we live."

"At the age of fifteen, Daphne Scholinski was put in a mental hospital for what her psychiatrist called "failure to identity as a sexual female." The hospital gave her a diagnosis that was brand-new to the medical books: Gender Identity Disorder. The years that should have been Daphne's typical high school experience instead consisted of periods of seclusion and physical restraint, frequent does of sedatives, and the close company of people who were truly crazy. It's hard to believe that doctors, circa 1981, described Daphne's treatment goals as becoming more obsessive about boys, learning about makeup, dressing more like a girl, curling and styling hair, and spending quality time learning about "girl things" with peers. Thousand of teenagers are institutionalized in the United States each year for being too sissyish or too much of a tomboy."

Examines how "Hollywood has reinforced stereotypical views of deafness and deaf people in nearly two hundred movies and television episodes".

"... explores how fantasy-especially superhero comics, which are usually derided as naïve and childish-is a catalyst for engaging the black radical imagination. Such engagements prompt 'fantasy-acts' against antiblackness, a transgressive way of 'reading' beyond the comic-book page to envision and to experience alternate, and potentially more just, realities."

Fiction. "Set in contemporary Nagasaki, the six short stories in this collection draw an unflinching portrait of the A-bomb's horrific, ongoing trauma. Whether they experienced the attack directly or have merely heard about it from survivors, many of the characters in these tales filter their pain and alienation through their Catholic faith, illuminating a side of Japanese culture little known in the West."

Fiction. "Ben and Rose secretly wish their lives were different. Ben longs for the father he has never known. Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother's room and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing. Set fifty years apart, these two independent stories -- Ben's told in words, Rose's in pictures -- weave back and forth with symmetry."

"As a trans woman, bisexual, and femme activist, Julia Serano has spent much of the last ten years challenging various forms of exclusion within feminist and queer/LGBTQ movements. In Excluded, she chronicles many of these instances of exclusion and argues that marginalizing others often stems from a handful of assumptions that are routinely made about gender and sexuality. These false assumptions infect theories, activism, organizations, and communities--and worse, they enable people to vigorously protest certain forms of sexism while simultaneously ignoring and even perpetuating others. Serano advocates for a new approach to fighting sexism that avoids these pitfalls and offers new ways of thinking about gender, sexuality, and sexism that foster inclusivity rather than exclusivity."

"Serano shares her experiences and observations, both pre- and post-transition - to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole. Serano's well-honed arguments stem from her ability to bridge the gap between the often-disparate biological and social perspectives on gender. She exposes how deep-rooted the cultural belief is that femininity is frivolous, weak, and passive, and how this "feminine" weakness exists only to attract and appease male desire. In addition to debunking popular misconceptions about transsexuality, Serano makes the case that today's feminists and transgender activist must work to embrace and empower femininity - in all of its wondrous forms."

Poetry. "With a splendid lyrical physicality that accentuates Shabtai’s terse immediacy and matter-of-fact scorn, the poems cover a period of six years from the 1996 election of Netanyahu as prime minister through the curfews, lynchings, riots, sieges, and bombings of the second intifada. But at the heart of J’Accuse is the fate of the ethical Hebrew culture in which the poet was raised: Shabtai refuses to abandon his belief in the moral underpinnings of Israeli society or to be silent before the barbaric and brutal. He witnesses, he protests, he warns. Above all, he holds up a mirror to his nation."

"Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover's campaign to defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and their leaders, Shakur was incarcerated for four years prior to her conviction on flimsy evidence in 1977 as an accomplice to murder. This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials."

"While working as an intern in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center, Jenn Shapland encounters the love letters of Carson McCullers and a woman named Annemarie-letters that are tender, intimate, and unabashed in their feelings. Shapland recognizes herself in the letters' language-but does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. And so, Shapland is compelled to undertake a recovery of the full narrative and language of McCullers's life: she wades through the therapy transcripts; she stays at McCullers's childhood home, where she lounges in her bathtub and eats delivery pizza; she relives McCullers's days at her beloved Yaddo. As Shapland reckons with the expanding and collapsing distance between her and McCullers, she sees the way McCullers's story has become a way to articulate something about herself. The results reveal something entirely new not only about this one remarkable, walleyed life, but about the way we tell queer love stories."

"Why was AIDS allowed to spread unchecked during the early 1980s while our most trusted institutions ignored or denied the threat? In this brilliant, now classic expose of one of the most important issues of our time, Randy Shilts does nothing less than answer this frightening question. And the Band Played On reveals how the federal government put its budgetary concerns ahead of the nation’s welfare, how health authorities placed political expediency before public health and how some scientists valued international prestige more than saving lives."

Fiction. "Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremony that defeats the most virulent of afflictions-despair."

"... provides powerful, on the ground evidence of the remaking of working-class identity and politics. Drawing on years of fieldwork and over 100 interviews with black, white, and Latino working-class residents of a declining coal town in Pennsylvania, Jennifer M. Silva tells a deep, multi-generational story of pain and politics that will endure long after Trump and the elections of 2016."

Fiction. "As if her parents' divorce and sister's departure for college weren't bad enough, fourteen-year-old Ricky Bloom has just been diagnosed with a life-changing chronic illness. Her days consist of cursing everyone out, skipping school. daydreaming about her crush, and trying to keep her parents from realizing just how bad things are. But she can't keep her ruse up forever. Ricky's afraid, angry, alone, and one suspension away from repeating ninth grade when she realizes: she can't be held back. She'll do whatever it takes to move forward—even if it means changing the person she's become."

"... a daring, inventive tale that intertwines the stories of a defiant Renaissance painter and a modern teenage girl. How can one be both--near and far, past and present, male and female?"

"This book is Clint Smith's contemporary portrait of the United States of America as a slave-owning nation. Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks, those that are honest about the past and those that are not, that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves."

"Explores how superhero comics, with their creative fusions of fantasy and realism, provide a flexible visual form for engaging issues of disability and intersectional identity (race, class, gender, sexuality) as well as for imagining and valuing different physical and cognitive ways of being in the world."

Fiction. "An infidelity, a death, and a legacy set in motion a chain of events that sees all parties forced to examine the unarticulated assumptions which underpin their lives."

"While White parents raising Black children has become increasingly salient in the last 20-30 years, the experience of those who grow up in these cross-racial families is much more complicated. Indeed, much of the adoption studies literature has privileged White parent voices, further silencing cross-racially raised Black-identified children. “Is That Your Mom?” challenges the dominant narrative that love trumps race (and racism) in family dynamics, and reasserts the need for critical voices of those most impacted by being cross-racially raised: the very people who face extreme racism that is both similar to, and uniquely different from, that faced by people of color more broadly."

"A group of children with different abilities and strengths come together to build a community garden."

Fiction. "In the mid-1950s, the town of Lacey in the Mississippi hill country is a place where the lives of blacks and whites, though seemingly separate, are in fact historically and inevitably intertwined. When Lacey’s fair-haired boy, Duncan Harper, is appointed interim sheriff, he makes public his private convictions about the equality of Blacks before the law, and the combined threat and promise he represents to the understood order of things in Lacey affects almost every member of the community. In the end, Harper succeeds in pointing the way for individuals, both Black and white, to find a more harmonious coexistence, but at a sacrifice all must come to regret."

"Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors."

Text and black-and-white photographs describe the efforts of a Vietnamese refugee family to adjust to life in Chicago.

"Recounts the story of Hawaii's last heir to the throne, who was denied her right to rule when the monarchy was abolished" by the United States in order to annex the islands.

"This book traces the long arc of Black women's relationship with technology from the antebellum south to the social media era demonstrating how digital culture transforms and is transformed by Black feminist thought."

"The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice."

Fiction. "Ruth and the Green Book is the story of one Black family’s trip from Chicago to Alabama by car in the late 1940s. Along the way they encounter prejudice, but they also discover The Green Book, a real guide to accommodations which was published for decades to aid African American travelers as they faced prejudice on the roads across the country."